Apple acquires artificial intelligence firm Emotient
Apple has made another interesting acquisition by purchasing artificial intelligence startup Emotient. The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The company uses artificial intelligence technology to determine emotions via facial expressions. Here’s more from the company’s site:
Emotient is the leader in emotion detection and sentiment analysis based on facial expressions. The company is at the vanguard of a new wave of emotion analysis that will lead to a quantum leap in customer understanding and emotion-aware computing. Emotient’s cloud-based services deliver direct measurement of a customer’s unfiltered emotional response to ads, content, products and customer service or sales interactions. Emotient delivers this value quickly, affordably, and at scale.
It’s unknown how Apple plans to use Emotient’s technology. According to the publication, it has been mostly used to help advertisers determine how consumers react to ads. It has also been used in the medical and retail fields.
I think it will be interesting to see how Apple uses the AI in the future, especially with the obvious privacy concerns. While Apple has made user privacy a priority, and even a selling point, I can’t say I like the idea of my emotions being monitored for any reason.
For other news today, see: Screen-recording app Vidyo is pulled from the App Store, Swiss watchmaker’s clone parodies Apple Watch, and Create your own animated drawings with Animatic by Inkboard.
